Feeling with the heart is much more difficult, but perhaps much more common than smelling red, was the conclusion I reached at the end of this text.
Despite being very tired, this sentence does not attest that I may have definitely lost my mind.
The maxim with which I started this text can serve as an introduction to synesthesia. No, I didn't go back into the intricacies of irrationality.
Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which a person is sensory stimulated and two sensory responses are triggered. A synesthetic feels the form of a smell or the taste of a sound, for example. In this way, kinesthetic experiences can contain several responses to the same stimulus. This neurological condition, although rare, can affect up to 4% of the population, with several variants.
The first time I came across this neurological characteristic was with my better half, she was groping the poetry of Fernando Echevarría, poetry that, according to her, has synesthesia as one of its cornerstones – now she screams at me from the other side of the room "That was my thesis!"
Let's leave our theses to others and return to Echevarría's synesthesia.
It's the night of rivers. cools down
Have the long pupil shaded.
And the old hands of having been green
Watching yourself spend the night by the water.
(...)
Newspaper i, of uncertain date, provided me with the second contact with synesthesia. It recounted the experiences that took place in the recordings of Jimmy Hendrix. Somewhere, said the producer, the guitarist would yell at him something like: “I need more green there…” or “This would be perfect if it had more purple…”, Hendrix would say of parts of the recordings. Conservatives might claim that the green Hendrix was asking for was a consequence of the massive doses of LSD the string virtuoso consumed. It might be; but it is still synesthesia.
Despite being widely described, synesthesia is still not fully understood. It is a rare condition, affecting synesthetics in different ways. One of the most common forms is called grapheme-color synesthesia in which there is an association of colors with numbers or letters. Examples of this type of synesthesia can be understood by reading the book “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet, who also has Savant syndrome. Tammet is able to indicate 22514 digits of Pi, thanks to its color association of numbers. A similar practice, in terms of mathematical calculations, is referred to by the famous physicist Richard Feynman.
What color is the se7e itself?
In addition to the association of numbers/letters in color, there are several other types of synesthesia, including:
-sound-color;
-word-flavor;
-flavor-touch;
-mirror-touch – the kinesthetic feels the touch when he sees another person being touched.
A real confusion of sensations even after adolescence...
Although the hereditary component of synesthesia is not fully explained, families with a higher percentage of this condition were identified. Scientific research has gradually been pointing out that there may still be a link between synesthesia to the X chromosome, given that the proportion of women vs. men with this neurological condition is 6 to 1. Some authors report that the evolutionary resilience of this gene, or genes, may be associated with creative processes, including memory. It is argued that the kinesthetic experiences may have evolutionarily contributed to the retention of sensory information more effectively. If we see and smell the world synchronously we might survive better, I add.
Certainly, there are still many open questions about synesthesia.
I can not anymore. fall slow
and ripe as time
of tears. do not sustain
robust sound stones.
a heart to the beat
of each ripe fruit,
how much I break out
in the silence of what I do.
a step by step heart
of the premature heart.
References:
Poems by Fernando Echevarría taken from Poesia 1956-1980, Edições Afrontamento (2000).
Brang, D and Ramachandran, VS (2011) Survival of the Synesthesia Gene: Why Do People Hear Colors and Taste Words? PLoS Biol 9(11): e1001205. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001205
Hubbard, EM and VS Ramachandran (2005) Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Synesthesia. Neuron, Volume 48, Issue 3, 509-520
Picture:
by Brang and Ramachandran (2011)
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